In recent years, with the progress of advanced medical technology, medical examination and treatment of various regions of a human body such as upper and lower digestive organs, bronchial tubes, abdominal cavity, thoracic cavity, ureteropelvic junction and biliary tract can be made using a medical endoscope without excision. Since various stains such as blood, humor, gastric juice, saliva and cell pieces are adhered to the medical endoscope used for medical examination and treatment, the medical endoscope must be cleaned to surely remove the stains before subjected to subsequent medical examination and treatment in order to prevent infection via the endoscope.
As an apparatus for cleaning the endoscope, there is known an automatic endoscope washer. However, in order to ensure a washing operation of the endoscope washer, it has been always required to previously manually wash the endoscope before using the endoscope washer.
There are conventionally known various detergents for medical instruments such as endoscopes. Also, other detergents such as dishwashing detergents are technically applicable to detergents for endoscopes.
Patent Document 1 discloses an aqueous liquid detergent containing a polyoxyethylene-polyoxypropylene-based low-foaming nonionic surfactant, etc.
Patent Document 2 discloses a detergent composition for automatic dishwashing machines which contains a low-molecular chelate agent, an acrylic acid/maleic acid polymer, an alkaline agent, polypropylene glycol, a reducing sugar, a thickening agent and water.
Patent Document 3 discloses a detergent for automatic dishwashing machines which contains a low-foaming nonionic surfactant, a detergent builder and an aliphatic carboxylic acid having 6 to 10 carbon toms.
Patent Document 4 discloses a detergent composition for containers which contains an alkali metal hydroxide salt, an aliphatic carboxylic acid, a sequestering agent, a surfactant, a high-molecular polymer and water.
Patent Document 5 discloses a detergent composition for medical instruments using a combination of specific nonionic surfactants.
Patent Document 6 discloses a low-foaming alkaline detergent that contains an alkali salt, three kinds of nonionic surfactants containing an ethyleneoxide and propyleneoxide adduct of an aliphatic alcohol, an aliphatic carboxylic acid and water.
Patent Document 7 discloses a detergent for metals which contains a nonionic surfactant such as a polyoxyalkylene alkyl ether, a specific nitrogen-containing organic compound, a carboxylic acid such as an aliphatic carboxylic acid and an alkanol amine compound.